We’re barely penetrated into the market. And so if we just get one project or two projects, it’s a win for us, so it’s not necessarily a big issue, but something that we are seeing. And so I think in general, we are stepping back and relying on the strength of our platform. And our platform is really best-in-class. We have in vitro, in vivo, in silico. And last year, we were playing a little bit with back because we are trying to led the Abveris team being as intend as possible to make their earnout. But now we can integrate. We can have one1 team, we can have 1 product offering. I think the integration of those 3, in vitro, in vivo, in silico is a very powerful — very powerful offering that will enable us to get more than our fair share in the market, even though the market in general is experiencing some headwinds in Biopharma.
Jim, do you want to take the second question?
James Thorburn: Yes. So in terms of China, I actually met with the China team last couple of weeks. So, it was interesting. China is impacted in the first quarter, i.e., December quarter, October, November impacted by the lockdowns. Then obviously, China opened up and then the companies were impacted by COVID. That’s extended into January, February. So China sales in Q1 declined to approximately just over $1 million, $1.4 million. We see modest pick up in the second quarter. Our second quarter, which is March. And then we see significant pickup if things normalize in the last half of the year. And if you look at our revenue, you see our first half revenue is about 40%, 42%, 43% of the overall year. You see China having a modest impact from the cost overall.
We’re seeing some large NGS customers coming in, in the second half of the year. So overall, we’re doing well in China. We’ve added increased — we’ve increased our leadership in China, enhanced our leadership and we continue to win good accounts in China, and we’re well positioned as the economy starts to normalize there and open up as they’re dealing with COVID. In terms of Europe, we actually had — Europe was up year-over-year. I mean, the December quarter is always a tricky one because of the vacations but continues to be strong in Europe, and we see good opportunity — see good opportunities in Biopharma. We continue to make inroads with our SynBio portfolio in Europe. NGS is looking good. You’ve seen some announcements there. And back to why we’re winning, it’s strengthened portfolio and we’re excited about launching the Factory of the Future.
I think that gives us great opportunities to engage with some of our larger customers and positions us well for next year.
Operator: Our next question comes from Luke Sergott with Barclays.
Luke Sergott: So a couple here for me. Jim, can you just talk about the strength — or Emily, the strength that you guys had on gross margin in the first quarter. It is usually expected like some type of seasonal step down, but this came in well above, I think, everybody what they were looking for.
James Thorburn: Yes. So back to the strength of gross margin in the first quarter came in just under 46%, which is a great start to the year. That was driven by — we’ve been working in terms of product mix and focusing in terms of continuing to manage our contribution margins. So we saw a strong — actually contribution margins in both SynBio and in NGS. So it was driven by a richer mix of products. We’re excited about that. It continues to reaffirm that we’re going in the right direction. Step down in Q2 down to 30% is purely driven by the impact to bring on the fixed costs associated with the Factory of the Future.
